Since the beginning of civilization there has been an interest in acquiring information of human traffic to and from a territory. This is illustrated by watch towers, peep holes in doors and other devices used to gather information on an unannounced caller, for example. Over the last 50 years telephone networks have been used as a source of obtaining information about people. For example, in the United States, PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) has evolved from operators announcing callers to more automated systems like ANI (automatic Number Identification), Caller ID, CNAM (National Caller Name) and CNAP (Calling Name Presentation) that provide information about a caller to a called party.
Wireless programmable communication devices such as mobile phones, PDAs, including Mobile PCs, the RIM BlackBerry®, the Apple iPhone®, and personal mobile devices, such as laptop computers and the Apple iPad®, are used in conjunction with communication networks to provide caller identification information, for example telephone number, IP address or e-mail address. The caller identification information can be stored on a database, for example address books, of the wireless programmable communication devices. A network passed id of the caller device can be used to access the database stored on the mobile devices for accessing information on previous or known callers who can now be identified by name, picture or other identifiers means that is less cryptic than the telephone number or the network address id of the caller device.
Several milestones in the telecommunications industry, for example, the breakup of AT&T in 1984, further deregulation due to the Telecom Act of 1996 and the recent proliferation of multiple network types have resulted in a failure to provide adequate information about a calling party to a called party. Several new carriers and new service providers have evolved with varying technology and standards such that the information available to the called party about the calling party via their carrier or network provider is currently not always available and varies in quality.
Today from a practical perspective, the information available to a called party related to a calling party is a function of both parties devices, carriers/service providers, type of networks as well as the direct or indirect business relationship between the calling party's carrier/service provider and the called party's carrier/service provider.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system/method for a smart device with a network connection to identify a calling party that goes beyond information stored on the device stored on their device and independent of information that that can only be licensed from their carrier and/or network service provider.